Monday, November 30, 2009

The last few months have been hard on guilds. While the loot in Trial of the Crusader has been very good, a large number of people have been unsatisfied with the quality of the instance as compared to Ulduar. Both the blogosphere and my guild have been rife with people quitting wow, going on wow hiatus, or leaving their guild.

In the past, nearly every move guildwise for me has been largely driven by scheduling issues. Having moved several times and changing time zones has made it difficult for me to make a previously workable schedule tenable.

On the other hand, over the past few weeks my dissatisfaction with my current guild hasn't come from scheduling issues.

Friday, November 20, 2009

There's been a ton of DPS chain traffic here, and welcome to one and all. Happy you stopped by!
This is a DK blog after all, however, so I need to post about my DK, eh? :P

First things first:
GUSH NUMBER FIVE about Shadowmourne!
WOW.
Using the current EP values offered in the unholy thread by the EJ theorycrafters, I get an approximate value of 3659 for the Shadowmourne, not including the proc! The weapon's epic precursor, Shadow's Edge, comes in at an EP of 3075, making the legendary appropriately... legendary. Of course we'll have to vie with Warriors and Pallys, but all in all... drool.

On to dps. Things will definitely be changing for 3.3. Scourge Strike will be appropriately powerful again, while the T9 set bonuses which are frankly overpowered will be nerfed. I've enjoyed rolling diseases, but really, that's not the way the class is 'supposed' to be played. For now, however, GOD is the way to go.
Interestingly, in tonight's raid I decided to sidegrade roll on Ony's little Deathbringer, and thought what the heck, I'll give it a spin. I had the Lion's Maw (232) in my offhand. My dps increased noticably, but not hugely, even when keeping my 2H dps spec! I'll have to get another 245 and try a slightly tweaked GOD DW unholy spec and see what happens. Interesting, but not surprising. DW tends to outscale 2H at the high end of every tier. I'll let ya'll know if I switch to DW until 3.3.

I'll be out of town for the next week but will try to keep blogging - and more importantly - keeping the DPS chain stuff updated, while I'm gone.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Chain post has been pushed to the second page of my blog here, so I'm putting up a quick update.

Since Wow.com gave out the link love, we've had a plethora of responses!

The update post with all the links to people I'm aware of that have responded to the questionnaire/survey/meme/whatever is here. Including my own responses, we have 35 completed questionnaires and counting!

So far we've seen responses (some bloggers did it for more than one class) from:

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I never played ‘vanilla’ Wow at level, so legendaries like Ashbringer and Thunderfury never meant all that much to me.

As a dedicated rogue in the Burning Crusade, I thought that the Warglaives were the ‘coolest things ever,’ but somehow never thought I would see them. As I worked myself up from Complete Noob to Noob Raider to Raider to Hardcore Raider, I began to appreciate the weapon for its stats, its art, and its color (ah yes, orange, mmm). As I mentioned before, lore was an inconsequential part of the game for me, so I paid little heed to the weapons’ origins. Nor, somehow, did I think that to aspire to such legendary weapons was a goal within my reach. I came quite a bit closer than anticipated, participating in numerous kills of Illidan on my rogue before and after Sunwell came out, but there were always rogues (and warriors, meh) ahead of me on priority. As such, I never really dreamed of getting them, and never got incredibly excited about them either. Unlike the guildie in my first Illidan kill who literally screamed for 5 minutes after being given the main hand weapon – and I’m pretty sure – crying real tears and peeing his pants as well.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The last few days I've been running chain heroics, trying to help guildies get Glory of the Hero achievements, and collecting badges for my enhancement offset.
Generally, I've had a guildie tanking, which means we vastly, vastly overgear it.

So far, when I've healed the runs, I've still been in resto spec, with resto gear.
It's been very fun, though, to keep Earth Shield on the tank, occasionally riptide, and toss a chain heal in there once in a while, and then dps. I've been dropping magma totem, and then stepping back to toss a few flame shocks, lava bursts, and lightning/chain lightning out there. Nothing amazing, but given that ~700-1000 healing per second is all that's needed, I've been able to top 1000 dps sustained with my healer on these runs. Fun stuff!

I think I'll have to drag a couple of pieces of elemental gear with hit on it out of my bank and equip them for heroic 5 mans to allow me to combine healing and dps better!

I'm sure some of you out there have experimented more extensively with such shenanigans, but for now let me tell you, it's a blast! ;)

which relate well to articles I've posted on Death Knights, so it's no surprise that search engines eventually point here. Most of the 228 different keyword search strings leading to my blog have 'dk' in them.

However, every search engine has its quirks, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that some poor souls ended up here when they entered:
'overpowered' :P
'elite jerk dk'
'snottydin' (hey, I did put snottydin in a post title)
'broomhilde' (wtf? how did that happen? I can't even find my blog on any page when I enter those terms)
and: 'Hawaiian hine' - at least it's not pron!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The final fight in Trial of the Crusader is the Traitor King, Anub'arak. We've all fallen through the floor by now. How do we DKs provide the pwnage? It's actually one of the more straightforward fights:

Pull: Just run in. Be a bit behind the tank so you don't get cleaved while the tank is turning him. Icy Touch while running in. Plague Strike. Regular dps rotation blah blah (we got it Hine). Get proc-buffed pets out and diseases rolling as per normal. IF you are on hard mode, you have to be stingy with your permafrost, so you'll likely be asked to Death Grip an orb to Anub's hip. The adds will be tanked here to allow aoe/cleave damage to take the adds down. When you get two adds, pestilence and Death and Decay to hit both them and the boss (or just pest and howling blast as frost). If adds are tanked seperately, usually just the ranged will dps them and melee stays on boss.

If you're not completely foolish with aggro on Anub, the biggest risk of dying here is not paying attention and getting hit by spikes in P2 or going totally nuts on adds in P2 and getting too many stacks of their acid drenched mandibles debuff.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The fourth and second-last fight in Trial of the Crusader is the Twin Val'kyr. The Twin Eredar are magic-based mobs who love to buff you with their orbs. :)

Pull: One needs two tanks. You can tank them seperately, but there's no reason not to tank them on top of each other. They don't cleave or anything. And all of your raid's cleave effects will hit both Twins. Just mark them both to assist with target switching. As DK, park behind your selected Twin and bang away.

All right, we've had a few other topics on our minds over the past week, but time to get back to our DK perspective on TOC! The Faction Champions are the famed "PVP in PVE" encounter of the Lich King!

As I'm sure you know, in this raid you'll get mobs of the opposite faction with typical class abilities and a decent-sized health pool. The AI is relatively sophisticated but also predictable on this fight. As you know, they'll crowd control (cc) your raiders, heal each other, and on heroic even break crowd control. It is a challenging fight particularly if you don't pvp at all, and heavily emphasizes your raid's crowd control abilities - something recently debated quite a bit on various blogs.

Ok, with the Wow.com linkage, we're finally seeing some more dps blogs!
It's great to connect with you all, and see some of the different perspectives on what we like about our respective dps classes!

Links below, and I will eventually be working up a list of active dps blogs and perhaps some basic analysis of the responses as well.

(Edits aplenty)

As expected for a copycat, It took a while for this dps version of the healing questionnaire to generate some responses, but it's getting there!
We now have a decent number of folks who have been kind enough to answer the questionnaire, so I'll link them here. Stop by and give them a read, and if you reply in comments or have your own blog, let me know and I'll give you a link here!
We've seen the dps persepective from a few folks so far. They are:
Calli over at Pew Pew Lazers gave us the arcane mage perspective, and it was a nice read!
Aifel at Plagued Candles gave the meme a try with his rogue. Neptune still loves you, don't worry! :)

EDIT: Millea at Dots & Hots completed the survey from the classic affliction warlock perspective, and tagged a couple of other dps blogs I wasn't aware of. Great work!

EDIT II: Pike at Aspect of the Hare wrote about Tawyn, a BM hunter. Yay! A post/blog about a fellow oft-maligned class!
I found Shagrat's MM hunter responses linked from Pike's site, but he has his own blog at The Voodoo Shuffle. Side note, both of them are participating in the Brit NaNo thing I first heard about at Righteous Orbs. GL guys!
The non-meme chain lead to a third Hunter (MM), Rilgon at Stabilized Effort Scope. Good work!

EDIT November 12: Another Arcane Mage sighting! Arioch posted at clearcasting about PEWPEWPEW Arcane Missiles!
Raven gave us our first Elemental Shaman perspective at Zarii and Me. I've never ellied, so thanks for the chain lightning love!
EDIT November 12b: We have a shadow priest! Thanks Anexxia from Bible of Dreams for filling this out. Ah, can't wait for 3.3 and the revenge of the spriest eh?
Arrens was tagged and gave it his best blogger college try at Through the Eyes of Death. Arrens loves the recount spam, I can tell. :)

EDIT November 15 (laaate night): Spaz at SpriestBlog! gave us his Circle of Killers for both his shadow priest and DK. I like giving the kitties or arms warriors hysteria to the mysteria too!
Xirella's fury warrior at Whirlwind of Doom was indeed the first warrior response I've received :P
Hasteur's destro lock burns up the interweb at The Curse of Doom. If I have to link another 'Dooom' here, I'm going to get skeered, especially given the day several of these were posted!
We have a boomkin! I've always felt the poor caster dps druids have been the most misunderstood class in Wow. Miztickow gives us the business at What Now, Kow?
Vinven didn't like DKs before reading my blog (right Vin?) but took the time to arcane it up at The Arcane Sanctum, and
Roxton offered the fire mage counterpoint at Great Balls of Fire. (point of clarification, it was Miss Medicina who originated the healer questionnaire which I adapted)! You go, fire eater!
Demo lock sighting! Veliaf at der Hexenmeister gave us a rather curse-filled response (j/k).
Fae's hunter at the Lazy Sniper gave us our fourth hunter (marks) response at the lazy sniper. That's good data, there!
Arrens' combat rogue slipped in at Sneaky Troll. Hey, you bring utility!
Morrighan has been sending folks this way from her page for a while and offered the retadin perspective at Caer Morrighan. Thanks!
Another Troll (hunter, marks) piped in, mon at Tusks! thanks to Lashaah. Careful, it's 'gory' over there!
Elithrea's survival hunter weighed in at WoWGiggity, and...
our final hunter of the day is Melfina's marks hunter at the WoW Noob. Whew! I think the hunters won... so far anyway. :)

EDIT 17 November:
The latest folks to fill it out! I'm just going to link these since it's very late and I wanted to at least get them up (since I can't do this at work).
Our first enhancement shaman, Rachman completed the questionnaire at Flame Shock.
"D" filled out the non-meme for a shadow priest and enhance shammy at LFM: Need Healer Plz.
Our third Enhance of the day, Thargnik posted at Throm'ka. Nice trilogy!
Finally, another DK!!! - at least, the first DK-only blog response. Thanks, Hatch (Escape Hatch)!
Check out Survival Hunter Ciddypoo's new blog (and responses) at Takes 10 to Taz'dingo.
Cynwise's DestroLock gave us the somewhat unique perspective of pvp dps at Cynwise's Battle Manual.Krause Kronicles' survival hunter, Nefernet chimed in from France! Sweet!

EDIT 19 November: I thought I had found Kungaloosh's before, but I hadn't: boomkin at Kungaloosh!
We have Dots & Hots - now we have Hots & Dots - thanks Cassie for your spriest contribution - and hey, you've gotta love this DK, right, right? :P
Gnomeageddon's frostfire mage chipped in at - you guessed it - Gnomeageddon.

That's a lot for one day!
The wow.com article brought a lot of responses in, which is great!
I haven't even had time to read through all the responses yet, but I will when I can, and try to keep up with all of the links as much as possible. Of course, if I get too many, I'll just start compiling them by class/spec etc, but the first weeks' worth get special mention!

Great work, all!

Remember, if you do fill one of these out, be sure to comment so I can link you!
While us dps bloggers seem to be less ubiquitous, quite a few of us are popping up now! We still are missing a few classes/specs, but we're getting there!

Friday, November 6, 2009

With more than 3-4 targets, the only class/spec in the game that is close to unholy is arcane mage.
This is because you have three diseases that are fully buffed by talents that are spread almost instantly to all mobs in the area with pestilence.
You can aoe with unholy with a rolling disease spec, or the 'traditional' 3.2.2 spec discussed in the Elitist Jerks forums; it shouldn't make a dramatic difference.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Yes, that's right!
My main is a dps after all!Miss Medecina started it (/APPLAUSE btw), Koriel extended it to Tanks.

So I'll be a complete copy cat and apply it to DPS.
I enjoyed the healing circle so much, I did think it would be fun to do as a DPS class, and the variety! Oh, the variety!

I'll call it the Death Grip of DPS.
Being almost completely unoriginal shames me somewhat, but hey, why mess with a good thing? This was indeed too fun to let it end!
I did change a few questions for the most part, but mostly left it with similar questions, just slanted for the death dealers amongst us.

Time to discuss the silly Eredar. Not sure why Fizzlebang thought it would be a good idea to summon him into the arena, or why LJ is able to oneshot the warlock with 100k health, but can't kill our 40k tank, but anyway, he's there, so let's kill him!

Pull: usually he's tanked right in the middle. Stand just outside the circle part at the start. If you stand closer, you may get agro even if the tank has consecrate or death and decay etc. up.... and you'll be oneshot (our enh shammy did just that last night on a heroic 10 man attempt). If I use my army on this fight, it's right at pull. Ask for a 6-count before the pull, and summon your army then. Your army can taunt adds, so it's not a good idea at other times, not to mention that they'll tend to die early at other points in the fight.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

I've blogged a fair bit about wow experiences lately, so today it's time for a more 'informative' post.

Obviously, Trial of the Crusader (TOC) is the content du jour, and probably will be for the next six weeks. I've assumed that most DKs out there are somewhat familiar with the fight. Many of us are intimate friends with Bosskillers, WoWwiki, and other sites that give fantastic information on boss fights. But in general, they list strats for melee, not DKs specifically.

Today (and in the ensuing series) I'll write about how to get the most out of your DK in TOC.

Monday, November 2, 2009

It was gratifying, however, to get a few congratulatory whispers in my pug Ony25 yesterday.

I had hopped on my shaman in Dalaran to do the cooking daily when I see a Demondog fellow post in trade (trade, why is that, instead of LFG?) that he's looking for a couple dps and a healer for Ony 25. I'm saved on my shammy, but I whisper him that I'm available on my dps DK.

He does the mandatory butt-sniffing and asks me my gear score... which is pretty good so he invites me. We get summons and head in. While buffing I get a couple whispers saying "nice gear," to which I say "tyvm."

About Hinenuitepo

Hinenuitepo is a female Orc Death Knight in the guild Casual Corps on the Frostwolf server in the MMO World of Warcraft. This blog centers around her adventures and those of her fellow Death Knights in fighting the scions of darkness and defeating pixellated monsters.
The author works for the world's most powerful military as a real life healer.